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Class 10 Civics: Power-sharing, 8 practice questions with answers

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These are 8 practice questions on Chapter 1, Power-sharing, of the NCERT Class 10 Political Science textbook, Democratic Politics II. Each has a worked answer and the textbook page it comes from. They ask you to work with the population figures for Belgium and Sri Lanka, put Sri Lanka's slide into civil war in order, use the Belgian model to settle an imaginary country's fears, answer the claim that a strong country needs power in one place, spot majoritarian rules, test three assertion-and-reason pairs, and explain who elects Belgium's community governments. Try each one on paper before you open the answer.

These questions are our own, drafted with AI help. Every fact was checked against the textbook page it cites, but no practising teacher has reviewed them yet. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

How this chapter is examined

In CBSE's Social Science paper for 2026-27, Political Science carries 20 of the 80 marks, shared by five chapters: this one, Federalism, Political Parties, Outcomes of Democracy, and Gender, Religion and Caste (curriculum, page 2). CBSE does not give this chapter its own figure, and it has no map item. The curriculum's learning outcomes for it are: why democracies need power-sharing, the challenges Belgium and Sri Lanka faced, comparing India with them, and how power-sharing keeps a country united and stable (page 5). The paper has 1-mark multiple-choice questions (including assertion and reason), 2, 3 and 5-mark answers, and 4-mark case studies (page 10).

What the chapter says you need

Facts from the NCERT textbook (Democratic Politics II, Class X, Chapter 1, printed pages 1 to 12):

Belgium by the numbers

Question 1. Take Belgium's population as one crore (100 lakh). (a) About how many Belgians speak Dutch, French and German? (b) In a Brussels neighbourhood of 10,000 people that matches the city's language split, how many speak Dutch? (c) Use your answers to explain why the chapter calls Brussels "a special problem".

Answer: (a) about 59 lakh Dutch speakers, 40 lakh French speakers and 1 lakh German speakers; (b) about 2,000; (c) Dutch speakers outnumbered everyone else in Belgium as a whole, yet were outnumbered in Brussels. (a) 59, 40 and 1 per cent of 100 lakh (page 2). The chapter says "a little over one crore", so these are round figures. (b) 20 per cent of 10,000 is 2,000; the other 8,000 speak French (page 2). (c) Dutch speakers were 59 per cent of the country but only 20 per cent of Brussels, while French speakers were a minority nationally but 80 per cent of the capital. Each community could feel outnumbered somewhere, and tension between them was sharpest in Brussels (page 2).

Sri Lanka by the numbers

Question 2. Sri Lanka has about two crore people. (a) Tamil speakers are 18 per cent and Sri Lankan Tamils 13 per cent. What share are Indian Tamils, and about how many people is that? (b) How do the two Tamil groups differ in where their families came from? (c) About how many Sri Lankans are Christians, and which language communities do they come from?

Answer: (a) 5 per cent, about 10 lakh people; (b) Sri Lankan Tamils are native to the country, while Indian Tamils' forefathers came from India as plantation workers in colonial times; (c) about 14 lakh, from both the Tamil and the Sinhala communities. (a) 18 − 13 = 5 per cent, and 5 per cent of 200 lakh is 10 lakh (pages 2 to 3). (b) The chapter calls the country's Tamil natives "Sri Lankan Tamils" and the descendants of colonial plantation workers "Indian Tamils" (page 3). (c) About 7 per cent of 200 lakh is 14 lakh, and the chapter says these Christians are both Tamil and Sinhala (page 3).

Sri Lanka: from independence to civil war

Question 3. (a) Put these steps in the order the chapter tells them: Tamil groups demand an independent Tamil Eelam; Sri Lanka becomes independent; a law makes Sinhala the only official language; the civil war ends; Tamil parties campaign for their language, regional autonomy and equal chances in education and jobs; a new constitution says the state shall protect and foster Buddhism; distrust turns into civil war. Give a year wherever the chapter gives one. (b) At which point did the Tamil demand change from more power within Sri Lanka to a separate state, and what had happened to the earlier demand?

Answer: (a) independence (1948); Sinhala the only official language (1956); the constitution on Buddhism; Tamil campaigns for language, autonomy and equal opportunity; the demand for Tamil Eelam (by the 1980s); civil war; the war ends (2009). (b) Between the campaigns for autonomy and the Eelam demand: the demand for more autonomy for Tamil provinces had been refused again and again. Independence and the 1956 Act are on page 3, as is the constitution's promise to protect and foster Buddhism, which the chapter lists after the language Act and the preferential policies. The Tamil campaigns, the repeated refusal of more autonomy, the Eelam organisations of the 1980s, the civil war and its end in 2009 are on page 4. (The question of when the demand changed is our own.)

Using the Belgian model

Question 4. In an imaginary country, Riverland, 55 per cent of people speak Lowan and 45 per cent speak Highan. In the capital, Highan speakers are 75 per cent. Name the part of Belgium's arrangement that answers each fear, and explain how.

  1. Highan speakers fear the Lowan majority will fill the cabinet with its own people.
  2. Highan speakers fear that Lowan members alone will be able to pass any law, however much it hurts them.
  3. Lowan speakers fear being outvoted in the capital's own government.
  4. Both groups want to run their own schools, culture and language matters, wherever their members live.

Answer:

(Riverland is our own example; every arrangement in the answer is from the chapter.)

"One authority should decide everything"

Question 5. A classmate says: "When many people get a say, decisions drag on. It is better if one authority decides everything." Give two answers from the chapter: one about how ideas of power changed with democracy, and one from what happened in Belgium and Sri Lanka.

Answer: (1) The belief that power must sit with one person or group in one place, so that decisions are quick, gave way with democracy to the principle that the people are the source of all power and everyone should have a voice. (2) Belgium shared power and stayed united, while Sri Lanka's refusal to share power ended in civil war. (1) The chapter says the old view was that dispersed power would make quick decisions impossible, but these notions changed with democracy: people rule themselves through self-government and power should be spread among as many citizens as possible (page 8). (2) Belgium's arrangements helped avoid civic strife and a split on language lines, and Brussels became the European Union's headquarters; Sri Lanka shows that a majority that refuses to share power can undermine the country's unity (page 5).

Majoritarian or not?

Question 6. (a) In your own words, what is majoritarianism? (b) Decide whether each rule below is majoritarian, and say why.

  1. In a housing society, the largest language group votes that all notices will be only in its language, and turns down every request for a second language.
  2. A club with two groups of members decides that a big change needs the support of most members in each group.
  3. A town with two language groups puts every street name and direction sign up in both languages.

Answer: (a) the belief that the majority community may rule as it wishes and ignore what the minority wants and needs; (b) 1 is majoritarian; 2 and 3 are not, because they share power or accommodate both groups. (a) The chapter's definition is on page 3. (b) Rule 1 lets the larger group decide alone and disregards the others, like Sri Lanka's 1956 law making Sinhala the only official language (page 3). Rule 2 works like Belgium's special laws, which need a majority from each language group so that no community decides alone (page 4). Rule 3 matches the Belgian street address shown in the chapter, with names and directions in French and Dutch (page 4). (The three rules are our own.)

Assertion and reason

Question 7. For each pair, choose: (A) both true, and R explains A; (B) both true, but R does not explain A; (C) A true, R false; (D) A false, R true.

  1. A: Sri Lanka's civil war ended in 2009. R: The demand for more autonomy for the provinces where Tamils live was turned down again and again.
  2. A: French speakers accepted equal representation in the Brussels government. R: Dutch speakers had accepted equal representation in the central government.
  3. A: Belgium worked out its whole arrangement in one change to its constitution. R: Belgian leaders recognised that their country had regional differences and cultural diversity.

Answer: 1 (B); 2 (A); 3 (D). (1) Both are true: the war ended in 2009, and the autonomy demand was repeatedly denied (page 4). But the refusals helped cause the conflict; they do not explain how it ended. (2) Both are true, and the chapter gives R as the reason for A: each side accepted equality where it was the majority because the other side did the same (pages 4 to 5). (3) A is false: Belgium amended its constitution four times between 1970 and 1993 to reach the arrangement. R is true: the leaders recognised regional differences and cultural diversities (page 4).

Belgium's third kind of government

Question 8. A German-speaking Belgian moves from the German-speaking area to Brussels. (a) Can she still vote for the German-speaking community government? (b) Which subjects does that government deal with? (c) How is the community government different from Belgium's two State governments in the people it serves?

Answer: (a) yes; (b) cultural, educational and language matters; (c) the State governments serve the two regions of the country, while a community government serves one language community wherever its members live. (a) A community government is elected by the people of one language community, Dutch, French or German-speaking, no matter where they live, so moving does not take away her vote (page 5). (b) Its powers cover cultural, educational and language-related issues (page 5). (c) Many powers of the central government were handed to the State governments of Belgium's two regions, so each covers a territory (page 4). A community government is chosen by speakers of one language, Dutch, French or German, whichever region they live in, and handles culture, education and language (page 5). (The move to Brussels is our own example.)

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Sources

All opened and read on 3 November 2026. Page numbers are the printed page numbers of the textbook.

The facts, figures and definitions are from the textbook pages above. The questions, worked answers, the sums and the imaginary examples are our own. This guide is general information; follow your teacher and the official CBSE notices.

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